The Hell of High School
by elizalove
Summary: OneShot. Poor Edward laments his stay in Forks High School as Mr. Banner accuses him of plagiarizing. Gasp. Perfect Edward cheats? Read and find out! Takes place a few weeks prior to Twilight. Reviews are always welcome!


**Edward's POV**

_…_seventy two, seventy three, seventy four, seventy five. I sighed as I ran out of ceiling tiles to count. I glanced down at the flooring. I was not in the mood to count squares again. My vision zeroed in on a black mark near my foot. Scuff marks. I would now commence to count scuff marks. One, two, three, four, four and a half…

I would never be able to decide what I hated more in high school; the dull thoughts of the students around me, or the maddening lectures that each teacher insisted on giving. I had not heard one original thought since arriving at Forks High School, and that fact was going to drive me mad. I sighed as I stopped counting and turned my gaze towards Mr. Banner, briefly allowed myself to be amused over the fact that I had studied the class topic more than the teacher had; but only briefly, it was not that amusing. Biology Class was almost over, two more minutes. Two more insufferable minutes.

The child in front of me had lint on her sweater; one, two, three, four…

Before I knew it, the bell rang. I exhaled in relief. Today's lecture had been even more below average than usual. I gathered my things and began to head towards the door.

"Mr. Cullen, could I please have a word with you?" I glanced back at Mr. Banner in mild surprise and then walked towards his desk.

"I would like to talk to you about the paper you turned in last week."

I groaned inwardly. I had _tried_ to dumb it down as best as I could. I had borrowed from the graduate work that I had done on genetics in years past. Usually I was quite good at forcing my papers to sound like a high school student, but still maintain an air of intelligence. Apparently I had dropped the ball on this one. I readied myself with the explanation that yes, Carlisle had helped me with it, and no, I would not do it again.

"Yes, Mr. Banner?"

"Well, Edward, I am a bit shocked at this, especially coming from you. You are a very intelligent young man."

I inwardly smirked.

"_…it is beyond me why a boy at his level of intelligence would feel driven to plagiarize."_

My invisible smirk was wiped away. Plagiarize? He was right about one thing, why _would_ someone of my intelligence stoop to plagiarism?

"Edward, I was reading your paper, which as your others, was continuing to show a solid thought process…however, certain phrases, they just seemed quite advanced, even for you."

"Sir," I said as smoothly as possible, "My father has helped me with my papers from time to time so that I could understand the subject even better. Perhaps this time I simply took more input from him than I should have."

"Yes, well, that was my first thought. However, I did a basic search on a couple of phrases from this paper, and I found an exact match."

My mouth dropped open in shock.

"Sir, I can assure you that every word in that paper is entirely mine."

Mr. Banner gave me a disdainful look as he thought, _"Does the boy think I'm stupid? The internet doesn't lie! Well, it does. Just not in this case."_

"Mr. Cullen, you pulled your paper from a medical database, which you no doubt have access to because of your father, which I will have to talk to him about. Anyways, the research that you pulled from was written by a student while doing his graduate work, Anthony Mason."

My jaw fell open again. I had published a few articles the last time I had graduated from college under a different name to avoid connection with Carlisle. Genetics interested me greatly, and if I ever was to pursue a career, I would consider going in that direction.

"Well Mr. Cullen? What do you have to say for yourself?"

At this point I was feeling a mix between annoyance and anger. This was ridiculous. I was being accused of plagiarizing my own work, and I could do _nothing_ to defend myself. My distaste for secondary education was growing by the second.

"Yes, Mr. Banner, in this case I went to a secondary source for information," I admitted through gritted teeth. "However, it was only in effort to extend my own knowledge in the subject."

I cringed as I added the last part. That was overkill, bordering on sucking up.

Mr. Banner agreed.

"Ok, well thank you for admitting it," he said aloud. "_Even though it was perfectly obvious that you felt this assignment was not worthy for you to do on your own._"

I nodded curtly.

"You will receive a zero on this assignment, and I will be speaking to your father about this."

"Yes, Mr. Banner, I apologize."

I turned on my heel and headed out of the room. I still did not know whether I was angry or annoyed at the whole situation. Perhaps Jasper could tell me.

I sighed as a trudged off to my next class. I had determined that there were 423 scratches total on the windows by the end of school.

As the final bell rang I turned on my heel and headed out of class towards my family. I stopped short when I saw them all standing outside of the Volvo grinning from ear to ear.

I growled. Alice. She told them what had happened. Their thoughts all drifted adround the idea that perfect Edward had gotten a zero on an assignment. He had failed a paper.

_"Tsk, tsk, Edward," Rosalie thought._ "_And we always thought you were smarter than the rest of us_."

"Good going bro!" Emmett shouted. "I guess I'm going to have to get Jasper to tutor me from now on."

Jasper snickered as he thought, _"Why so angry Edward?_"

I glowered at them all.

Alice danced up to me and tossed me the keys to the car. She giggled. "Mr. Banner just called Carlisle at the hospital. Carlisle told him that he was very disappointed in you, and that no, this will never happen again! He even offered to have you try to find out of Anthony Mason was still alive so you could _apologize_ for stealing his ideas! Mr. Banner said that wasn't necessary."

I ignored her as I started up the engine of the car.

I looked at the dust floating in front of my face. One, two, three, four…

* * *

**This is my attempt at humor, and at relating with Edward. We don't always get along that well. Reviews are better than Christmas presents!**


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